Posts Tagged ‘Recession’

It’s a question that’s surprisingly overlooked – maybe overshadowed by the challenges of homelessness in and of itself.

At the Alliance, we focus on different kinds of homelessness, including:Veteran HomelessnessFamily HomelessnessYouth HomelessnessChronic Homelessness

Each group comes to homelessness in different ways – and the solutions to that type of homelessness varies as well.

Veteran HomelessnessVeterans often become homeless as a result of some post-war challenges. Emotional or mental distress (including PTSD, emotional trauma, etc.) can manifest in damaging behaviors, like substance abuse and addiction. These behaviors can then lead to the inability to maintain permanent housing.

Recently, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Tammy Duckworth appeared on CNN to discuss the state and health of veterans returning from conflicts abroad. The Secretary expounded upon the increase of suicides, mental illness, and homelessness among veterans from our current conflicts, as well as the VA’s continued efforts to address these ongoing issues.

Family HomelessnessFamily homelessness is typically caused by some unforeseen costly event: a raise in rent, medical emergency, or the like. The inability to manage this financial hurdle can push a family into homelessness – an occurrence that’s been felt more dramatically in the current recession.

Despite sensationalized news reports, families that experience this kind of homelessness aren’t typically picturesque, middle-class families. They’re typically families that were already living on the economic fringes of society – often paycheck-to-paycheck – who are pushed off by the big event.

The good news – if this counts as good news – is that families don’t typically require a lot of government assistance to get back on track. If we’re able to identify and assist these families early on – through rental subsidies, cash assistance, or the like – the families can often save enough to lift themselves out of homelessness and go back to maintaining permanent housing.

However, recent media reports from communities across the country suggest that family homelessness is on the rise. Just today, New Jersey reported an uptick in families requesting social services in Hunterdon and Somerset. Check out our media map for counts from your community.

Youth HomelessnessI never understand when this happens to young people, but research shows it happens as a result of some kind of family disruption (divorce, abuse, etc.).

Our foster care and juvenile justice care also contribute to youth homelessness. Those who age out of foster care (once they turn 18) or get out of the juvenile justice system are often without the social support systems of guidance networks and end up highly at-risk of becoming homeless.

Luckily, most young people aren’t homeless for long. They go back home, they find a friend/relative, someone intervenes – they find a way to get off the streets. But those who don’t quickly find a route elsewhere do tend to stay homeless.

Chronic HomelessnessChronic homelessness is basically what you think of when you think “homelessness”. Those people on the street, sleeping on sidewalks and bus stops – those are the chronically homeless. “Chronic” means just what you think – that these people are consistently and persistently without permanent housing.

By and large, chronically homeless people have some sort of disability – either physical or psychological. This is usually a key factor in their homelessness, and the central roadblock to their finding a stable home.

Luckily, this is also where we have made the most progress. From 2005 – 2007, the country saw a ten percent reduction in the rates of chronic homelessness.

The solution: it’s called “permanent supportive housing.”. Basically, it’s permanent housing COUPLED WITH supportive services, including counseling, therapy, and other life skills workshops.

The GREAT news is that this solution has proven not only effective, but financially viable. Turns out that the costs of emergency hospital visits, jails, run-ins with the police, and the slew of other reactive social services is actually more than what it would cost to set up, maintain, and provide permanent supportive housing for the chronically homeless. Acclaimed writer Malcolm Gladwell (of Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers fame) wrote a great article for the New Yorker called “Million Dollar Murray”, which explains just this concept.

So that’s how people become homeless nowadays – challenging to be sure, but definitely something that we can work on.

Okay, so every Friday, I’m going to try to have a news roundup of stories that were particularly interesting, or funny, or insightful, or really really awful (I’m kind of looking forward to writing about the last ones!).

Luckily for you, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Associated Press came to your rescue today.

Yesterday, the Department of Labor announced that unemployment had reached 9.5 percent – a 26-year high. The Associated Press and NPR reported that industry sectors across the board were hit fairly hard, with the bright spots being in education and medical fields.

There’s been a flurry of discussion about the recession and it’s impacts on homelessness: news about foreclosures and middle-class families and rising rates of homelessness across the country (check out the Daily Clips section of our website for a listing of related stories). But more troubling than those sensationalized stories are reports like this one about unemployment. While the recession may come and (hopefully) go, the root causes of homelessness – including a dearth of affordable housing, mental illness, and (yup) unemployment – are steadfast in the face of economic sways.

Recent genetic studies, according to reporting by NPR have shed some light on the development of schizophrenia.

Researchers, long stymied by puzzling disease, tried to find difference in the genes of thousands of people – some had schizophrenia; some didn’t.

The researchers found a few interesting leads, one of them linking schizophrenia to the immune system. Some are speculating that the “tendency to develop schizophrenia may have something to do with infections of mothers during pregnancy.”

While this article isn’t directly related to homelessness, there is a sizable percentage of the homeless population that we refer to as “chronic” – meaning that those people experiencing homelessness have a disability of some kind (anyone remember The Soloist? Jamie Foxx?) Moreover, the role of deinstitutionalization has been a part of the history of modern homelessness.

Let me know what you think of the stories, and don’t hesitate to shoot a shout out if you see anything that you might want to share!